“It a very unforgiving thing with cameras, so aging is something you try to do less and less of on the screen. You try to pick the films that work best for you as you age,” said Clooney, who turns 55 on May 6.

I’ve been waiting two years to tell this story about the local actors who appeared in “Carol” with Oscar-nominated actressess Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

When “Carol” was shot here in 2014, local participants were ordered not to speak to the media. Believe me I tried, but nobody wanted to talk and jeopardize their part in the film.

With “Carol” up for six Academy Awards on Feb. 28, I finally got actors Kevin Crowley, Ann Reskin (Strunk) and Ken Strunk to tell about the film, along with “Carol” local casting direct D. Lynn Meyers.

Drummer-composer Antonio Sanchez, who won a Grammy Award Monday for the “Birdman” movie score, will talk about the film at the Esquire Theatre before performing at the Xavier University Jazz Series next month.

With “Carol” up for six Oscars, the Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Film Commission invites you to watch the Academy Awards at the Esquire Theatre Feb. 28.

WXIX-TV reporter Michael Baldwin will host “And The Winner Is…,” a benefit for the film commission which helped lure and facilitate director Todd Haynes. He filmed “Carol” here two years ago with actresses Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

If “Carol” wins any Academy Awards, it would be a big upset after all the film awards ignoring the Cate Blanchett-Rooney Mara movie this month.

Blanchett and Mara, who starred in the 1952 love story shot here in 2014, again were shut out at the 22nd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards Saturday, as “Carol” was at the Golden Globes and Critics Choice awards.

Blanchett was up for best actress; Mara for supporting actress. “Carol” was not nominated for a SAG best picture award. The SAG winners were familiar faces from January’s award circuit:

Kaufman wrote and co-directed the film about a mundane, out-of-touch Los Angeles author who comes to Cincinnati to address a customer service conference. In Michael Stone’s world, everyone looks and sounds the same -- except a young woman from Akron named Lisa.

The Cate Blanchett-Rooney Mara film, shot here last year, lived up to all of its pre-Oscar buzz at a screening Saturday night at Clifton’s Esquire Theatre for the Greater Cincinnati & Northern Kentucky Film Commission.

Reviewers have called the film “gorgeous,” ‘flawless” and an Oscar contender. And I agree.

Blanchett, just nominated for a Golden Globe best actress award, also should be nominated for an Oscar for her performance as unhappily married Carol Aird, who pursues New York department store clerk Therese Belivet (Mara) in 1952.

Mara, who won best actress for Belivet at the Cannes Film Festival last May, also received a Golden Globe nomination as best actress for “Carol,” for her sensitive portrayal of a confused young woman maturing after her affair with Aird.

The New York Times has dubbed Don Cheadle’s “Miles Ahead” an Academy Awards contender, along with that other film shot in Cincinnati last year, “Carol” starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

“Anyone who wants to get a jump on possible Oscar nominees for 2017… should check out ‘Miles Ahead,’ the closing-night film” Sunday at the New York Film Festival, wrote A. O. Scott.

Cheadle made his directorial debut and starred as iconic jazz innovator Miles Davis in the film shot here in July 2014. He also co-wrote the script, set in 1979, about the trumpeter and a Rolling Stone reporter (Ewan McGregor) trying to recover an unreleased recording stolen from the musician’s home at the end of his five-year, self-imposed “silent period” out of the public eye. The Times said:

Haynes' work “has never been more assured, defined by silken camera work and expert framing that conveys his characters’ loneliness. … ‘Carol’ offers a mature portrait of love struggling to materialize, and survive, in a disapproving society,” the Voice says.

The 87th Academy Awards show airs this Sunday with host Neil Patrick Harris, his first time hosting the awards show. There are eight nominees for best picture, a diverse list which includes Selma, American Sniper, The Imitation Game, Birdman, and Boyhood.

Academy Award-winning actress Lee Grant (Shampoo, The Landlord, The Balcony) has written her memoir, I Said Yes to Everything, and she’s on the phone with our movie expert, Larry Thomas, for a conversation about the highlights and low points of her long career.

The 86th Academy Awards show airs live this Sunday with Host Ellen DeGeneres. Which film will win the Oscar for Best Picture of 2013, Gravity, American Hustle, Dallas Buyers Club, 12 Years a Slave, Zombie Massacre?